Easing Back into a Routine

Today, Ella is two weeks old. It is so nice to have her here. It is amazing how fast the time flies once a new baby is born.

My little sister, Candace, came over to visit today. It was wonderful for me to have someone to talk to and it was great for Arin to get some extra attention. We were also able to start easing back into our routine today. It's been about five or six weeks since we've done "school". I know that Arin was missing our one on one time to play together. So today, we played some games. It was nice to have Candace here participating with us too. First, we played with Arin's marbles. I found the idea for this game on this site. The yellow pad with the suction cups is made for the shower, but we are using it for Arin to place one marble on each suction cup. This is super simple for her, but still a lot of fun. Sometimes she just fills the whole pad with random colored marbles and sometimes we try to make more of a pattern with the marbles.

Next, we all played with Arin's new Dora Dominoes. Arin had never played dominoes before, but she had a great time with it. These dominoes have pictures on them, so it was more like playing a matching game. This was also great because Arin had to take turns, which she was actually very willing to do.

Next, we played Arin's new counting puzzles. These are self-correcting puzzles that help teach numbers 1-20. First, I handed Arin the numbers 1-5 and the matching puzzle pieces. She counted the pictures on the first side of the puzzle and then picked the right number to go with it and then put the puzzle piece together. This was too easy for her, so we added numbers 6-10. She can count to 20 on her own, so counting the pictures was a breeze, but we haven't worked on a lot of number recognition for 6-10. Still it wasn't too difficult, but more of a challenge than numbers 1-5.

After we cleaned up our games, we went outside and Arin picked some oranges for lunch. It is so nice to have citrus in our backyard, but unfortunately our orange tree didn't produce this year like it has in the past.

Then Arin did her chores (feeding the cats).